"TGA should mandate all pharmaceutical companies to put clear warnings on the outside of the boxes of all dangerous medications. TGA should access denominator data, improve the quality of information reported via spontaneous reporting systems. The necessary and sufficient information required from the reporter, to assess a causal link between medicine and effect, should be requested in the user instructions on the TGA Blue cards. Blue cards should be given (with directions to equivalent online reporting) to every consumer at the point of drug sale and regularly to every patient in Australia."

Minister Hunt's response failed to identify ways to improve consumer reports and rather disturbingly stated that Australian legislation does not currently require medicines to have warnings on them.

Given the cost to Australian taxpayers of medicine errors and the fact that pharmaceutical companies have the skills and knowledge to do so, and give warnings in other countries, we found this statement egregious.

We, therefore, wrote to Minister Hunt requesting a meeting between him and consumers harmed by poor prescribing practices together with a detailed response to our concerns.